


To Protect ... And Perhaps Scratch

by Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:16:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Eternal%20Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for a prompt at the Hunger Games Comment Ficathon on LJ.</p>
    </blockquote>





	To Protect ... And Perhaps Scratch

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at the Hunger Games Comment Ficathon on LJ.

They were gone.

I don't know where they went, but after the fire and the loud noises, somehow, my family got lost. They were lost and they needed me to find them. That place with concrete buried beneath the land with no right smells wasn't our home, anyway. Our home was among the trees and the mice and the breezes and the goat that would sometimes never shut up.

Too big for me to eat, but sometimes I wanted to try. Maybe it would have stopped making noise and alerting the rats to where I was hiding.

They needed me to find them. Mom and Prim and even the one that thought I didn't like her.

She needed me to find her more than anyone did. Prim had told me so the night that she ran with me down the hall that smelled of stone and into the room of too many people.

Prim never lied.

She held me close that night and smoothed my fur down after I played the game of chasing things for the humans and made them laugh. Made her sister smile, something that Prim always liked. I could tell when Prim was happy. Prim was happy when she knew where the other Kat was.

"She needs us, Buttercup," Prim of the soft voice and gentle hands told me that night. "She's not as strong as she thinks she is and we need to take care of her."

\- I suppose that meant that I wasn't allowed to scratch her anymore. -

Then I felt water on my fur, water that only ever leaked from Prim's eyes. When water leaked from Prim's eyes, I knew that it was a serious problem. She had cried the day that her sister went away and I was angry that they made her leak water like that. They had no right to make my Primrose cry. I would rake my claws across their throats and watch them bleed like rats if it would make her and her sister smile.

"They took her away and hurt her, Buttercup," she whispered in the darkness. "We can't let them hurt her again. We have to protect her." She was quiet for a long while and I thought perhaps it would be a good time to burrow down in her blankets and take a nap. "You have to look after her, Buttercup. If anything happens to me, you are the only one she has."

I didn't like the idea of anything happening to Prim. Prim was Prim and nothing could ever happen to her.

Then the noise and the shouting happened and I lost track of where she was.

But that's all right. I always find Prim and I will find her sister and I'll take care of both of them.


End file.
